During the second virtual planning meeting for developing a work plan of the National and Regional Initiatives for 2016, taking into account 2015 activities, it was proposed that the next virtual meeting should try to accommodate as many participants possible, as it is a last meeting prior to the Open Consultations and MAG Meeting scheduled to be in Geneva, Switzerland from 4 to 6 April, 2016.

Due to different time zones challenges, the Secretariat decided that the most effective way to accommodate everyone, is to host two meetings on the same subject [during earlier and later UTC hours].

After the doodle polls were scheduled, the community decided the first meeting to be scheduled for Thursday, 24 March 2014 at 16:00 p.m. UTC, while the second meeting was scheduled for Tuesday, 29 March 2016 at 20:00 p.m. UTC.

As the agenda items and overall procedures were identical for both meeting, this summary report will be a joint summary of both meetings.

Meetings were hosted by Anja Gengo on behalf of the IGF Secretariat and jointly moderated with Ms. Marilyn Cade, 2016 MAG member. The Agenda is attached to this document as Appendix A1, and a List of Meeting Participants as Appendix A2. Appendix A3 contains the Presentation on the first results, the main subject of this meeting.

Participants were given an opportunity to introduce themselves identifying their role in a National or Regional Initiative, or stating if they are attending as an observer and indicating the time framework and plans for having a 2016 IGF event.

The agenda was adopted unanimously.

Summary Report

The Host opened the call describing the purpose of the meeting, which is to present the first results of the Public Call for suggestion themes for the IGF’s 2016 intersessional work.

Participants were reminded that the new MAG members for 2016 are appointed, emphasizing that certain coordinators of the national and regional initiatives are among the group members.

The first non-official results of the Public Call for N/RIs coordinators and members to suggest themes that potentially could be reflected by the IGF’s 2016 intersessional work were shared. The Results are attached to this Report as Annex 3. The Results can be seen here, as well.

As agreed at the beginning of the meeting, the First Results were presented by the moderator. After going through the analyses, the floor was open for discussions.

The concerns were raised regarding the classification of the suggestions from the third section of the Form. Some of the participants were of an opinion that they are too broad defined. It was explained that the initial idea was to have suggestions defined as broad as possible, as they as such sublimates more potential sub-topics that could later raise out of it.

One participant suggested to add the official analysis and break downs on the geographical diversity of the submitted answers in correlation with the suggested themes.

The Qualitative Analysis of the additional suggestions [of the third section] attracted the particular attention. The Participants were of an opinion that the cluster that received 26 submitted answers regarding the Enhancing the cooperation between global IGF, regional and national IGFs should be a subject for further reconsideration and discussion, especially because it had significant support of the N/RIs members present at the substantive session at the IGF 2015 in Brazil. Furthermore, it was emphasized by several members that this questions was raised during the previous MAG meetings, as well as the virtual meeting that the IGF Secretariat is continuously scheduling and hosting.

The Participants agreed that the work with the IGF Initiatives should be taken into consideration by the IGF Secretariat and by the newly appointed MAG, in line with two main criteria: processes and issues. Namely, during the previous MAG meetings, the Initiatives were advised that their work should be focused on the issues, rather than on the process. The Participants raised an analytical discussing on this, explaining that this cannot be universally accepted, as not all Initiatives are on a same organizational level and do not exist under the same conditions.

It was concluded that this year’s MAG should focus its attention to the new coming Initiatives that require support from the group and the IGF Secretariat in terms of establishing effective process, while the focus on issues should be attained to the more experienced, already existing Initiatives. The special attention should be focused on the developing countries.

In line with the elaborations above reported, a need for a unique platform for gathering the experiences and advices form the existing IGF N/R coordinators/members should be established, as it would help the overall work of the initiatives. It was suggested that the IGF Secretariat should be marked as a legitimate address for coordinating this work. The need for a dedicated contact personin the Secretariat for supporting this work, was once again emphasized and supported by the Participants.

It was suggested that the cluster number eight (8) should be re-organized and potentially merged with the suggestion number two (2) in the second section.

It was suggested that an online continues interaction on analysing these proposal should be continued.

It was pointed out that there is an urgent necessity to present these results to the wider community, so that the future actions steps can be planned.

Next steps

It was concluded that the presented results are a clear evidence of the necessity for work improvements between the N/RIs and the global IGF.
A support for presenting these results during the upcoming Open Consultations and MAG meeting, was expressed.

It was noted that these results should be presented in line with the IGF 2015 Survey results [results attached in Appendix 3], as there are concrete and objective indications for the need for work improvements of the process and issues, for the purposes of enhancing the cooperation between the global IGF and the N/R IGF Initiatives.

Next Meeting: An informal meeting during the upcoming MAG meeting is officially scheduled. The Meeting will be held on the first day of the MAG Meeting: Tuesday, 5 April 2016 during the lunch break, from 13:00-14:30 p.m., CET. Remote Participation will be available during the meeting. Details for the registration to participate remotely will be distributed to the list separately.

The Secretariat will distribute a summary of both meeting through the national and regional Initiatives’ mailing list: [email protected]